Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Hello! My name is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, but my family always called me 'Tonio.' I was born in Lyon, France, on June 29th, 1900, into a world that was just discovering the magic of flight. From the time I was a little boy, I was fascinated by machines, especially airplanes. I would spend hours tinkering, drawing, and dreaming of soaring among the clouds. Though I came from an old, noble family, my heart belonged not to castles and fancy halls, but to the endless sky. The hum of an engine felt more like home to me than any grand estate, and I knew from a young age that my destiny was up there, in the vast, open blue.

My dream of flying didn't come true right away. First, I tried studying architecture, but my mind was always wandering back to the sky, sketching airplanes in the margins of my notebooks. Finally, in 1921, I began my military service and was able to train to become a pilot. Flying in those early planes was a true adventure! They were rickety and unreliable, made of wood and fabric, and every flight was a test of skill and courage. But up there, looking down at the world stretched out like a map below, I felt a sense of freedom and peace I had never known before. I knew I had found my true calling; I was meant to be a pilot.

In 1926, I joined a brave group of pilots flying for a company called Aéropostale. Our job was to deliver mail, which sounds simple, but at the time, it was one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. I flew treacherous routes over the vast, empty Sahara Desert in Africa and the towering, jagged Andes Mountains in South America. The solitude was immense, spending hours alone with only the sound of my engine. But it was also beautiful. It gave me time to think deeply about life, friendship, and what truly connects us as human beings. It was during these long flights that the ideas for my first books began to form. My experiences became my inspiration, especially after 1935, when my co-pilot and I crashed in the Sahara Desert. We nearly died of thirst before being rescued, an ordeal that would deeply shape my most famous story.

While flying was my profession, writing was my way of making sense of the world and sharing what I had learned among the clouds. My adventures gave me so much to write about, from the powerful bonds between pilots in my book Wind, Sand and Stars to the nature of love and loss. When World War II began, the world felt dark and uncertain, and I moved to the United States for a time. It was there, feeling lonely and thinking about my home in France, that I wrote and illustrated my most famous book, The Little Prince, which was published on April 6th, 1943. On the surface, it's a story about a pilot who crashes in the desert and meets a boy from another planet. But it's also about seeing with your heart, caring for others, and understanding that what is essential is often invisible to the eye.

Even though I was much older than the other pilots, I felt I had to help defend my country during the war. I rejoined the French Air Force and flew reconnaissance missions, which meant gathering information about enemy movements from the air. It was dangerous work, flying over hostile territory in a plane that was not built for combat, but I believed it was important. On July 31st, 1944, I took off from the island of Corsica for my ninth mission. The weather was clear, and it was a beautiful day for flying.

I never returned from that flight. I was 44 years old. My disappearance was a mystery for a long time, but my stories lived on. I like to think that even though my time on Earth ended, my ideas took flight and traveled farther than any airplane could. Today, The Little Prince is read by children and adults all over the world, translated into hundreds of languages. I hope it continues to remind people to look at the stars, to care for their own special 'rose,' and to never forget the wonder and imagination of being a child.